Have you played the RCBM and Statera balance mods? If so, what are your thoughts on them and on why they can't/won't/shouldn't be integrated into the base game? If not, play them.
I would love to get their opinion on why they think their balance direction is better than the RBM/Statera Mod.
I find some of their balance changes odd, they should run some of these through with the community (like the uber inferno change, that came out of NOWHERE) as the community plays with the game more
Well, Uber is working on making units more specialized, so they have similar balance direction in that regard. As far as the more questionable changes, I think I prefer Uber's balance direction. T2 shouldn't be cheaper. It's meant to a major advancement in tech; you can't have that at twice the cost of T2 and still have long term balance. Mex giving less metal reduces the scale of the game, which is bad. Giving scouts weapons decreases the specialization of them, which goes against your own balance paradigm. Adding more units... as if there aren't enough in the game already. brian, you also seem to like doubling unit's health, but that has a major adverse effect on how much the game snowballs. With more health, armies have the opportunity to get closer to each other before the front line goes down, meaning many more units can attack at the same time. Not only does this look weird (opposing units can sometimes touch each other before they die), but it means a larger force can leverage it's advantage more and come out of battles with less casualties than the current stable build, making the game much more swingy; someone might win one engagement decisively and win the whole game off of it. Double health also makes engagements require more micro, which goes against the design of PA in general (as far as I know). The only thing I like about the balance mods is being able to go factory first.
double health makes random heavy army loss less than quicker than reaction. to prevent snowballing, increase unit cost a wee bit, just to reduce unit numbers 1/8, fractional yet definite. adding weapons doesn't make them scouts. It removes scouts and you scout with a non scout unit, likely a raider. the point of vanilla, you can always have more room for units. More units, more tools, more chance for variety. With proper specialization the player is encouraged to build variety too, not just one.
Uber hadn't made units specialized for a VERY long time. Also, in regards to T2 being cheaper? Oh well that's simply because our version Statera, does not have a "T2" it has an "advanced", advanced, unlike an extra tier, are not mean't to beat their Basic equivalents, in fact Advanced has no basic equivalents. They are meant to be specialized, and so cost double that of basic, they simply don't replace any units however. This makes Advanced first class citizens and enables you to spam BOTH (Advanced to a certain degree in what unit you want and why), the whole point of the mod was to encourage unit composition, and encourage use of both basic and advanced to complement them. Lowering metal given does not encourage less production, it encourages further expansion. Especially the Advanced metal extractor producing the same as the basic, it encourages you to expand further, and further. It also encourages reclaim which is something that is horribly neglected in vanilla PA. Doubling unit health has had no adverse effects on our balance, and when you say "Units clash before they kill eachother" I don't consider that a bad effect, I consider that GREAT it's so much more interesting, if you've played Total Annihilation armies clashed all the time, it does not look odd, at least in the eyes of most of us. Double health does not make you micro, it only gives you the chance of it. Choosing what specific units you use and why also has a large impact on how much micro you may want to do, having sniper units for example, and kiting. Units dying the second they are in range of each other is just not fun, and nerfs quite a few units, the fact bots can now get in range of tanks and shell out heavy dps before they are wiped from the map is so much more interesting and further defines them, giving actual reason to create them. (Look at Statera's hover tank for example) Having units actually be able to survive a battle is also better, and this is also gives combat fabrication units further roles, in the fact it now is not only the "on the go healer" but it also allows you to repair your forces for another counter attack. In no way is our balance correct, and Uber's wrong, it's just a different take on things. As Uber has said themselves there really is no "Right" balance, just one's people prefer, or different ones.
However, for a two-tier upgrade balance scheme to work, especially with the excessive power-jump in between the two, Uber needs a crap ton more units for variety. 15 mobile units at T1 is completely unacceptable; 12 at T2 (5 of which are direct role upgrades over T1) is crippling. While our balance direction (both RCBM and Statera) may not be " correct ", it's certainly making objectively more efficient use of in-game assets than Uber's proposed direction is. Uber's direction just has so much wasted space in it's design. Edit: To answer your question @stuart98 & @brianpurkiss, Uber feel like the game is more accessible this way. Accessibility translates into more sales. More sales equals more money for them and (hopefully) a longer period of PA getting support. That's about the sum total of it. If the game is too cerebral your average-joe gamer won't buy it. Uber hooks them, but the Mods on offer are the reason people will stay.
I really don't feel that it IS more accessible though. T2 being an upgrade means that you need to learn timings. Go T2 too early or too late, and you're screwed. If T2 is a side-grade, then when you build it becomes much less important. It also means that T2 won't crash your economy. Not to mention a whole lot of other things that Uber's balance has such as bots being useless and grenadiers being used as the main battle bot illogically, although these aren't inherent issues in a "T2 is better than T1" balance, although they do make the game less accessible as you really have to learn which units are crap and which aren't.
The main reason I play the Realm balance right now is in base game T2 invalidates T1 permanently. There's also no reason to build bots other than slammers in vanilla as the rest plain out suck.
I play the balance mods, because I want something different from vanilla. Swap the names of Statera/RBM and Vanilla. Suddenly: I play the balance mods, because I want something different from vanilla. Somebody's going to make a mod for the old balance anyway, so there's no point. If anything, it promotes the balance mods, but that promotion becomes void when you realize that they're nothing more than edited numbers.
